Demonstorm

Al-Arynaar moved up on either flank, covering the route to the injured. To Hirad's right, Thraun snarled. His yellow-tinged eyes were wide but the set of his body calm and composed. Beside him the Xeteskian, Suarav, gripped his sword tight in his right hand. He was determined but in the shake of his body was the memory of the horrors he had suffered to get to this new place of danger. His soul would not be easily taken.

The investiture failed. The stone and timber of the playhouse wall

burst in, tumbling across the gangway and sweeping aside benches. Balcony boxes fell across an area of thirty yards. Dust and debus billowed towards them where they stood at the edge of the standing room, clouding around the edges of the ForceCones. Karron bellowed and squawked. They charged in, reavers behind them.

'Spells away!' roared The Unknown. 'Raven, let's use what we learned on board ship. Suarav, take our lead. Steady. Steady.'

Pheone's ForceCone blazed overhead, slapping into the reavers flying in behind the karron. Deep blue FlameOrbs leapt from Denser and Sharyr's fingers, arcing over The Raven and dropping into the pack still outside the playhouse. Hirad felt the heat when they passed, saw the detonations and heard the screams. Mana fire splattered across the defenceless karron. It had the desired effect. Those in front of the fire clustered in.

'Casting,' muttered Erie

The air dried out all around them. Dust dropped from the sky, clearing the scene dramatically. The One casting, otherwise invisible, struck the karron in the front rank and over a wide arc in front of The Raven. These lesser demons, far more reliant than their better-evolved reaver brethren on the density of mana, sensed the linkage to their life force shorn from them.

Hirad sensed panic spreading through the karron but another set of FlameOrbs from Denser focused their attention once more. They came on again urged on by the reavers but vulnerable with Erie

'Ready, Raven!' The Unknown's mace tip tapped rhythmically on the floor of the playhouse. The first karron reached the standing-room floor. 'Stepping up, let's take them.'

The Unknown double-tapped his mace. At the left-hand side of the line, Ark took a pace forwards and left. He thundered his mace through in an upward curve, following up with a downward slash with his blade. The karron was Icnocked backwards, its stomach opened up, spewing its internal organs to the ground. The Raven all followed suit in order, a heartbeat apart. Blows catching karron on limbs, heads and torsos. The ferocity of the attack stopped the demons in their tracks, confusing them with its direction.

Suarav hadn't followed the move and had gone straight forwards, many Al-Arynaar likewise. But the space it left between him and

Thraun was bait the karron in front of it could not resist. It stepped forward and flailed its limbs outwards.

'Thraun, go.'

Ahead of The Unknown's order, Thraun had ducked and moved right, coming up under the karron's strikes and crushing its skull with a massive overhead strike. The creature collapsed and Thraun paced forwards and right again, leading die line this time. Suarav had anticipated too and moved with him. His blow was caught by the karron ahead but still the demon was pushed back. The Raven's line drove hard, maces aiming at gut and chin, beating a space in front of them.

'Down,' ordered Denser.

They dropped to their haunches, Thraun dragging Suarav with him. IceWind wailed into the space. Simultaneously, Sharyr dropped more FlameOrbs outside the playhouse. The elven flanks moved up left and right, forcing the karron into an ever tighter area. Abruptly, the lesser demons broke and fled into the teeth of screams of rage from the reavers.

'Hold!' bellowed The Unknown.

Outside, the demons massed again. Strike-strain bunched and clouded. Karron jostled and reformed. Reavers landed and began to run.

'Plenty more work to do, Raven. Good start but they might not fall for that again.'

The Unknown tapped his mace once more and The Raven paused for breath.

Flanked by guards and with Vuldaroq next to him, Dystran watched. He tried to take it all in but didn't really believe what he saw. Tried to understand and follow the speed of strikes. It was all but impossible, a fact that the demons were finding out in far more brutal fashion.

Auum and Evu

as the reavers flew in. Not in great numbers. Perhaps fifteen and accompanied by dozens of the tiny strike-strain. Karron grouped and moved up but did not attack.

Auum had logged his immediate targets. The first approached on foot, three others in the air around it. Auum dropped and swept its feet from under it, bouncing back and striking out and left with his knife hand at his next target, dragging the point deep into wing membrane. The demon flittered clear. Auum ignored it. The next had whipped out its tail. Auum caught it in front of his face, looped it around his wrist and dragged the reaver from the sky. It bounced onto the ground. The TaiGethen dropped onto its chest and drove his knife up under its arm.

Never stopping, he rose and turned, sweeping his right foot high over the head of Evu

Seven reaver bodies lay on the ground around the two TaiGethen. The others gathered and dived straight down. The elves waited. Without a word, they dived left and right in concert, cartwheeling back onto their feet and ru

Behind him came Auum, sliding into their prone forms, knives in both hands driving home. His body was a shadow across the courtyard. And where he went, demons died. Fifteen reavers were downed and strike-strain littered the ground before the karron attacked too.

Auum and Evu

Dystran ordered the doors closed. Heavily invested with protection, they would stand massive bombardment by the karron should the need arise, and Dystran had no doubt that it would.

He watched the elves return to the catacombs.

'Extraordinary,' he said.

'But even they knew when to stop,' said Vuldaroq. 'A handful of demons are dead and tens of thousands still fly.'

'If only we had a few hundred more like them, eh?'

'Shame that you killed so many of them with the Elfsorrow, isn't it?'